EDITORIAL: For president: Re-elect Barack Obama

Four years ago, voters sent a brash, young freshman senator from Illinois to the White House to dig the nation out of the biggest economic morass since the Great Depression.

Barack Obama needed a bigger shovel.

Yes, it's been a rough four years. The recovery at home, shrouded in the cost of two wars abroad, has been spotty at best. That is not to say, as the president's Republican detractors insist, that it's been non-existent. They should know, since they've made it their mission to block anything that would offer progress or show him in a good light.

Advertisement

Moreover, the GOP cure -- a return to the trickle-down economic and tax policies that marked the Bush years -- we fear would instead send us careening back into the ditch. Going back to a policy that put us in this economic bind to begin with strikes as exactly what the country does not need.

The fact is, the seeds of economic recovery have been sown. Unemployment is at its lowest point in the last four years, even if it remains higher than anyone would like.

Now is not the time to go back. Republicans may have forgotten the disastrous policies of the previous administration. Like them, we will not invoke his name. But make no mistake. The roots of the nation's economic implosion lie there. Keeping former President George W. Bush out of the public's eye won't hide that. His top-down economic policies and lack of oversight and regulation were a ticking time bomb that blew up in our face.

It was left to President Obama to clean up the mess. We wouldn't give him an A, but we're not ready to flunk him out either. Especially when the alternative sounds an awful lot like a path that would lead us back to double-digit unemployment, a housing market in ruin, a stock market still smoldering from the fallout of a catastrophic bank collapse, and an auto industry teetering on the brink of ruin.

Backed by Democratic majorities in both the House and Senate his first two years, President Obama pushed through an economic stimulus plan that even he now would admit was not big enough. He bailed out the auto industry, but the economy still is gripped with fits and starts.

However, the 2.5 million jobs created by the 2009 Recovery Act cannot be denied, even by those content to harpoon the president for not doing more even as they stand in obstruction at every turn. The Bureau of Labor Statistics tells us 4.3 million jobs have been added since Obama took office. Unemployment is down, at 7.8 percent the lowest point in four years. Neither of those smack of "not doing enough."

Perhaps the hallmark of Obama's first term is the Affordable Care Act, referred to not exactly lovingly as Obamacare. How you feel about it likely depends on if you have kids who can stay on your health plan until they're 26, or if you deal with a pre-existing condition. On the other side, critics rip the program for not doing what is was supposed to -- making health care more available and controlling costs. It is not a perfect plan, much like the president's first term. But it is an important starting point, and again, seeing it rolled back as Republicans insist they will do is simply moving in the wrong direction.

Ironically enough, challenging President Obama is former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, whose health care plan there formed the basis for Obamacare.

But perhaps the real "challenge" facing voters is which Mitt Romney would enter the White House. Is it the governor who expertly shepherded that health care plan through a bipartisan process, and who pushed a decidedly moderate social agenda in his home state?

Or the would-be standard-bearer savaged in the primary by conservatives in his own party, and who seemed to tailor his message to win their support?

Romney brings with him an impressive business resume and the distinctive feather of being known as the man who rescued the 2002 Olympics from disaster.

But candidate Romney seems to have been co-opted by the quest for another gold medal -- the seal of approval of the conservative wing of the Republican Party.

It is that singular quest whose fingerprints seem to be all over his vow to overturn Obamacare, slash taxes and spending, and gut Medicare. It is that sentiment that appears behind his selection of Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan as his running mate. It is Ryan's austere budget plan and proposal for a radical change in the Medicare program that delights the tea party faction of the GOP.

Perhaps more troubling, however, is Romney's penchant for tailoring his message to whoever he happens to be addressing at the moment. Thus his shift on health care, and now saying he actually likes some aspects of the plan. Or his refusal to identify the specifics in his economic plan, exactly what he would cut in trimming taxes by $5 trillion.

And in his lowest moment, there was the audio of candidate Romney saying he had no use for 47 percent of Americans who don't pay taxes, who were in effect on the government dole.

"I'll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives," he said. He'll never convince us that type of sentiment should take root in the White House.

If that is not enough, voters need only broaden their perspective, and remember that they decide not only the leader of the United States, but of the free world.

Obama's calm, forceful hand is clearly superior to the combustible Romney, and the barbed comments he has lobbed toward Russia, China and Iran.

His detractors like to paint Obama as soft when it comes to foreign relations. We like to think Osama bin Laden would disagree. We will acknowledge that the president's handling of the situation in Libya, first failing to protect American lives, and then offering a muddled, changing explanation, was not his best moment.

As we said, Obama has not enjoyed a perfect four years. But we choose to look ahead. We abhor the thought of going back to the policies that drove this country to its knees. Just as importantly, we implore both Republicans and Democrats to end the bloodsport of gridlock in Washington. You weren't elected to subvert every attempt by the opposition to initiate change. You were elected to get things done for the good of the country, regardless of party. We urge both parties to rediscover the art of compromise.